FAQ: How much does a Conservatorship cost?

Because a Conservatorship involves taking over the ability to make decisions for the Conservatee, everyone involved takes the task very seriously and there are many safeguards, which have the side effect of making the process expensive. We often use as an analogy, what does a car cost?…

We charge by the hour for our work. Our first goal is to find a way to avoid the expense and effort of a Conservatorship altogether by finding an alternative. If that’s not possible, we try to control the hourly fees by assigning as much work as possible to non attorneys, whose time is billed at a lower rate.

The cost of a Conservatorship has a very wide range. Factors affecting the cost are: the agreement of all family members; the ability to get cooperation of a doctor in completing a capacity declaration; whether the proposed Conservatee objects to being conserved; the ability of the Conservator to follow detailed instructions and to keep exact financial records; and whether the Conservatee’s property needs to be sold.

In addition to the labor costs, there are a number of hard costs: filing fees, cost of certified letters, cost of recording documents, cost of Court investigation reports, costs of having legal documents served on the proposed Conservatee, costs of the probate referee to value property.

All that being said, under the best of circumstances the first two years of Conservatorship are likely to cost at least $5,000 plus an additional $2,000 every two years after that. For developmentally disabled persons without an estate it is often possible to establish a Limited Conservatorship for around $1,500 with no on-going costs.